Group Psychotherapy Informed by the Principles of 
                                    Somatic Experiencing: 
                 Moving Beyond Trauma to Embodied Relationship 
                                                    
                                Peter J. Taylor, PhD, SEP, CGP, FAGPA 
                                 Roger Saint-Laurent, PsyD, SEP, CGP 
                
                
                
               This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the 
               International Journal of Group Psychotherapy on January 27, 2017, available online at: 
               http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207284.2016.1218282. 
                
               To cite this article:  
               Peter J. Taylor Ph.D., SEP, CGP, FAGPA, & Roger Saint-Laurent Psy.D., SEP, CGP 
                     (2017).  Group Psychotherapy Informed by the Principles of Somatic 
                     Experiencing: Moving Beyond Trauma to Embodied Relationship, International 
                     Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 67:sup1, S171-S181. 
                
                
                
                
                                             ABSTRACT 
                                                    
               This article introduces the application of Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) to group 
               psychotherapy.  SE utilizes normative physiological responses to danger as a means of 
               restoring healthy functioning of the nervous system.  The authors suggest that the 
               principles of SE, developed primarily for use with traumatized individual clients, can 
               make the work of interpersonal group psychotherapy deeper and more effective.  They 
               respond to a clinical vignette by conceptualizing the group members from an SE 
               perspective and discussing how the process of an SE-informed psychotherapy group 
               would likely unfold quite differently than the vignette as presented.   
                
                
                                      SOMATIC EXPERIENCING 
                                                    
               Trauma offers a vivid portrayal of the mind and body under threat.  Developed from the 
               study of these normative physiological responses to danger, Somatic Experiencing® 
               (SE™) is a comprehensive set of principles and techniques for precisely attuned clinical 
               work. Although Peter Levine originally developed SE as a treatment approach for trauma 
               (Heller & Heller, 2001; Levine, 1997; Levine & Kline, 2006), the principles of SE are a 
               useful framework for working with intrapsychic and interpersonal phenomena far beyond 
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            events traditionally defined as traumatic (Heller & LaPierre, 2012; Levine, 2010; Payne, 
            Levine, & Crane-Godreau, 2015).  By paying close attention to the client’s nervous 
            system, the SE-informed therapist supports the client in the experience of greater 
            coherence and resilience, engaging, completing, and resolving—in a slow and supported 
            way—the body’s instinctual responses.  In doing so, the nervous system is reset, which 
            restores inner balance, enhances resilience to stress, and increases vitality, equanimity, 
            and the capacity to engage actively in life (Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, 
            2015). 
             
            Using the body’s reaction to trauma as a template, it is possible to work more effectively 
            with less-dramatic situations that have similar physiological consequences.  Even in 
            apparently minor experiences of threat, the mind and body are sent into “survival” mode, 
            reacting in habituated ways, driven by the autonomic nervous system and the “survival 
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            physiology” it triggers.  Practitioners of SE  find that when internal cues and 
            interpersonal interactions are viewed through the lens of survival physiology, what 
            previously looked like symptoms can be seen as management strategies.  These patterns 
            can be welcomed as the organism’s best attempt to protect itself.  They can be utilized as 
            clues to what may have happened to require such adaptations (the event) and what didn’t 
            get to happen that needed to happen (the reaction to the event).  When the full reaction to 
            the event can be felt in the present, by slowing down and titrating these subtle physical 
            and mental processes sufficiently that they can be noticed, followed, experienced, and 
            survived, the person discovers—in a fully embodied knowing—that the survival-
            threatening situation has passed and relative safety has been found.  Only then can 
            higher-level change begin to occur. The client moves from the realm of survival to the 
            realm of interpersonal engagement (Porges, 2011) and healing.  
             
            In a typical SE session, a practitioner helps a client discover what didn’t get to happen 
            during an event that was experienced as overwhelming.  The practitioner supports the 
            organic unfolding of the previously missing experience as it happens now, in all its 
            emotional, physical, cognitive, and perceptual elements.  With proper training, this 
            process of renegotiating trauma is relatively easy to facilitate when working with discrete 
            events such as motor vehicle accidents, medical procedures, natural disasters, or instances 
            of overt violence; the body’s experience is obvious (both in terms of what happened and 
            what didn’t get to happen) and the experienced practitioner can easily find creative ways 
            to access a response, such as fight or flight, that was previously unavailable.   
             
            However, practitioners working with individual clients often have more difficulty 
            identifying, evoking, and renegotiating the sort of chronic interpersonal patterns that lead 
            																																																								
            1 SE is one of a number of approaches (e.g., Cohen, 2011; Kurtz, 2007; Ogden, Minton, 
            & Pain, 2006; Siegel, 2010; van der Kolk, 2015) developed in recent decades that view 
            the mind and body as equal (and cooperative) vectors for intervention. In discussing the 
            integration of its principles into group psychotherapy, we do not argue that other mind-
            body approaches may not have equal value, but this is the one in which we are steeped 
            and which offers a language and a comprehensive set of principles we find useful. 
             
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        to equally debilitating patterns of “survival physiology”; it is far too easy to lapse into 
        endless cognitive discussion of the patterns or to enact them in the treatment relationship.  
        In an SE-informed group psychotherapy, such survival physiology can be re-worked in 
        vivo, thus altering the interpersonal symptoms it creates.   
         
                 SOMATIC EXPERIENCING IN GROUPS 
         
        SE-informed group psychotherapy broadens and deepens the efficacy of either SE with 
        an individual client or group psychotherapy uninformed by the principles and practices of 
        SE.  Others have brought SE to various group settings, such as crisis response to terrorist 
        acts or natural disasters  (e.g., Parker, Doctor, & Selvam, 2008), mindfulness training, 
        and the like.  Similarly, there is much interest in the application of the principles of 
        interpersonal neurobiology and body awareness to group work (e.g., Badenoch & Cox, 
        2011; Cohen, 2011; Denninger, 2011).  But, to the best of our knowledge, we are the first 
        to apply the specific principles and practices of SE to group psychotherapy per se.  “SE-
        Informed Group Psychotherapy” is our own term for this work.  To the best of our 
        knowledge, there is no research on the use of SE in group psychotherapy.  Indeed, 
        research on SE itself is just beginning (e.g., Brom, Ross, Lawi, & Lerner, personal 
        communication).  
         
        Many approaches to group psychotherapy utilize a focus on the here-and-now.  The SE-
        informed group deepens and sharpens this focus by privileging—at least initially—the 
        tracking of felt sensations.  This slows down interactions and asks group members to 
        become aware of what is going on inside of themselves before coming out to “meet” the 
        other.  They may not be able to do so, at first, but as the invitation is repeatedly offered, 
        the group begins to recognize the various states of individual nervous systems (“am I in 
        ‘survival brain’ or ‘ready-to-explore brain’?”) and how those states optimize or detract 
        from the possibility of seeing or being seen.  Whereas the individual SE practitioner 
        tracks shifts in the individual nervous system, the SE-informed group therapist tracks the 
        nervous system of the multiple levels of the group organism:  in each group member, in 
        shifting subgroups, and in the group as a whole.  Within the range of resilience, the 
        therapist supports individual group members and the group as a whole to enlarge their 
        capacity to tolerate increasingly intense experiences without dissociating, overriding, or 
        simply relying on habitual patterns.   
         
        One hallmark of the experience of trauma is the absence of choice (“I didn’t choose to be 
        assaulted by that bully on the playground!”), but in the interpersonal world of the group, 
        the members are reminded over and over that they have choices, even about whether to 
        take up a given opportunity or not. Moreover, not only is there a choice, but subtle 
        signals felt in the body might usefully inform that choice (“what tells me, in this moment, 
        that it would be ok to engage with that other group member?”) rather than just forging 
        ahead and toughing it out.  Simply encouraging group members to “take the risk” of 
        engaging—without paying conscious attention to body-based cues—leads group 
        members to reenact old patterns that override choice, that don’t allow accurate 
        assessment of interpersonal or internal cues, the very patterns developed in earlier group 
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        settings (such as families, schools, churches, or social circles) that participation in group 
        therapy hopes to rework.  
         
        Working in this way, group members begin to recover their deeply felt sense of what is 
        safe and what is not.  They begin to trust that the group therapist is truly committed to 
        protecting their right to follow their deeply personal indicators of what is safe.  The group 
        becomes a safer place—safe enough to take the risk of experimenting with new ways of 
        managing risk.  It becomes possible not just to enact “how I am” and “how you are” but 
        to notice those patterns and consider the very real possibility of trying something new.  
        The focus moves from content (“what happened to me”) to patterns (“how I experienced 
        that”) to new possibilities (“I wonder what would happen if I followed this felt impulse, 
        to pull away or to move towards?”).  Because the relational field of the group is always 
        alive and always changing, and because the group is always invited to slow down and 
        notice “what’s happening now?,” there arise multiple opportunities to experience, 
        observe, and work with old patterns, uncoupling past and present, discovering new 
        options in real time, and healing the connection to present relational reality that history 
        has distorted by habituating to what was once the only choice available.  This healing 
        happens in two ways:  through direct experimentation by a given member in relationship 
        to another member, the therapist, or the group; and through vicarious learning as 
        members bear witness to, feel resonance with, or manage distress caused by what another 
        or others are undergoing. 
         
         
                  APPLICATION TO THE VIGNETTE 
           [Note:  The clinical vignette to which we are responding is attached below.] 
         
        The vignette, of course, is not an SE-informed group.  Three months into its 
        development, had Dr. Newland been informed by the principles of SE, we would expect 
        an entirely different climate and process, even with the cast of characters described.  We 
        will give a few examples of how that might have developed, and how it might now 
        function. 
         
        Dr. Newland would likely have begun early group sessions with an explicit exercise in 
        what we call “arriving,” taking the time necessary to fully transition from where members 
        were to where they are, inviting each member to notice:   
           Where have you come from?  How was it to get here?  How is it to be here? How 
           does it feel “on the inside”—in the physiology, in images, in emotion—and how 
           does it change, if it does, as time is taken to notice the here-and-now 
           environment?   How does the chair hold you?  Where in your body is there 
           relative tension and where is there relative calm?  Then, what is it like to begin to 
           come out from your inward focus, to notice the room, then other members, and 
           the experience of coming back to the group?  What do you remember from last 
           time? or not?    
        The invitation is to be curious about the details of the current experience without trying to 
        change it, and from that place of awareness of self, and perhaps of other, to notice what 
        arises that may emerge into the group.  This opening experience becomes a model for 
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